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“HOLY ACTS FOR HOLY PEOPLE” what can we l earn f rom others?

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LAKE LOGAN EPISCOPAL CENTER !

Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina

November 22nd, 2013

‘Really honored that you have invited me to join you and share some of my recent learnings with you. Over the first 11 months of 2013, I have been on a virtual cross-country trek. I’ve interviewed 98 Diocesan Leadership teams across the Episcopal Church. My goal has been to connect each diocesan office with the invitation to sponsor and sustain new ministries by the end of March. This survey has been a transformative experience for me – one that has swelled my appreciation of the Episcopal Church and the incredible ministry opportunities we have before us! These are amazing encounters with remarkable leaders and I am grateful for the opportunity! What I am about to share with you are the learnings that these ministry leaders have shared with me.

This is what brought us together, today!

Why is it important for you to join this exploration, today?

What needs to be different because we spent this time together? !What hopes did you bring with you, into this time we are sharing?

Quick Appetizer Buffet …

What is it that you are longing for?

Who We Are !Created in 2009, our 5 PM Liturgy and the community that has formed around it aims to use the Anglo-Catholic liturgical and spiritual traditions of the parish and experiment with a greater involvement of the community itself in the creation of and participation in the liturgy. Thus, our 5 PM liturgy is the same shape as our morning liturgies, and like the morning liturgies, makes us of silence and stillness, bowing, incense and chant. At the same time, however, our 5 PM liturgy has a number of elements that are all its own: a “shared homily,” a time when community members respond to the brief homily offered by the preacher; the use of jazz, bringing a distinctively American modern spirit lives to the liturgy; an “in-the-round” configuration in our parish hall, meaning the community sees each other at the Eucharist; and finally, the use of artists-in-residence who offer their art as a part of the worship.

The Reverend Lester V Mackenzie, a native of South Africa and a third generation priest, was raised and nurtured in the womb of freedom, the South African Anglican Church during Apartheid in Cape Town. He says that his call is to make available to all people the kind of faith community that allows the individual to see themselves and each other through the lens of Go’d unconditional love.

At the heart of being a faith community is story. Stories are for all ages, for children as well as adults. They aren’t abstract but invite engagement and participation. When we experience them they nurture our souls and keep us on track. Story carries common memory, hold a vision and gives us our identity. - Judith Liro - See more at: http://www.hildegard-austin.org/#sthash.fvvhjkFY.dpuf

!What Is Thad's? !We're a movement of missionary people who've made a choice to leave the relative safety of the established church and take the love of Jesus "to the streets". Our calling is to bring this transforming love into people's lives in positive, transformative and practical ways. !In church-speak, we're a "mission station", an experimental community of the Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles.

Our Story !The Crossing started when a small group of young adults – some churchy folks, some not – got together to pray, share dreams and stories and ask some big questions: ! What would happen if we could step out of the Sunday morning box, bring along the most compelling parts of church and then claim the holy experiences so many of us have far from the walls of church? What if we got rooted in the good news Jesus walked around preaching and living – the good news of God’s peace, God’s desire for justice, God’s longing to gather all God’s children and name them as beloved – and then proclaimed that good news in words and sounds and images that truly touch our lives … and probably the lives of other people hovering far from the walls of church?

bE.kON is a word layered and textured with meaning. It is a combination of the word “be” with the greek word eikon; a veiled reference to the beginnings of words like connect and contemporary (meaning ‘with’); while also closely resembling the word beacon as in the name of the neighborhood we are located in Beacon Hill. ! • be has to do with presence and place, it is about existing and living • eikon has to do with image or representation, it is where we get the word ‘icon’, which is an image into the divine ! bE.kON is a collective hope of being and becoming the imagination of G-d. Humanity is made in the image of G-d and are the creative outlet of G-d’s imagination. By having a way of life in common we hope to live out what this Imagination of G-d is in our world. !bE.kON reminds us that ‘being with’ is our regular posture of presence. We are intentionally positioning ourselves to stand in solidarity with those on the margins of our society and institutions.

What do these examples all have in common?

What do these examples all have in common? !The temptation is to think that they all offer replicable models of doing liturgy. !Slightly different take: They have all found a way of embracing disruption, disturbance, and dissonance.

“For the birds”

The disruption of Big Bird on the Wire! This bird stretched the structures - tested the limits. !What are the disruptions stretching your “wires?” !In the end, their interaction with the Presence of this Disruptive Bird showed them up. !How are these disruptions stretching you?

TITLE of the PRESENTATION PAGE INFORMATION

I love this graphic illustration of the space we are called to inhabit right now. I’m pointing to the odd label underneath this narrow path between order and chaos. The word “chaord.” The word chaordic is a portmanteau like the word “smog” – it's a combination of two morphemes – two words with their sounds and meanings. Just as smog is the sum of smoke and fog combined, chaordic refers to a way of being with both chaos and order at the same time. Both are present, neither is dominant. The sum of these two words is used to describe an emerging space between the two conditions – it’s often referenced as a chaordic space or a chaordic way of being. !This narrow space between the two is also referred to as the Chaordic minefield. It helps to explain why, when we stray too far over to order, we restrict our field of view too narrowly and we cannot see what is actually emerging. When we get lost in the chaos, we cannot sense the hand of God at work in the world about us, either. There is a narrow path that is not at all straight and bounded. Because of the influence of chaos, this path is constantly shifting - it’s often the kind of moving target that it takes a whole community to discern! This is where over-bearing Heroic Leadership gets us in trouble, as a denomination. So many of us joined because of a proclivity towards ordered worship and an ordered “way of being.”

A n a r c h y

Control

So let’s work through a couple of questions, OK? Given our cultural sensibilities in the Episcopal Church, on which side of the chaordic space do you think we tend to wander off? Our internal culture does not prepare us for being present to chaos. In fact, we often overreact and leap to controlling tendencies. My sense is that, many of us are quite fond of a command and control environment and we experience chaos as intolerable! It is experienced as a disruption of our coherence. Remember the film clip: “For the Birds”

Are the “fruits of the Spirit” enough evidence of

God’s hand or presence?

Are the Fruits of the Spirit enough evidence of God’s hand? !Galatians 5:22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Gamaliel’s Test has become the norm … !I don’t think we need to be so fearful!

“For the birds”

The disruption of Big Bird on the Wire! This bird stretched the structures - tested the limits. !What are the disruptions stretching your wire? !In the end, their interaction with the Presence of this Disruptive Bird showed them up. !How are these disruptions stretching you?

What you calling

“Sacred?”

Many times we call a practice “sacred,” just because we like it! !Seriously, how do you measure the efficacy of sacred ritual? !Is your claim that a ritual is “GOOD” based on the sense that the ritual makes you feel good?

What you calling

“Scared?”

Oftentimes, if we limit the sacred to our likes and dislikes, it makes it really hard to engage God out in the world! Instead of a sacred theology, we end up with a sacred theology! It’s hard to engage God in unexpected ways when we cannot trust God showing up outside of the bounds of our comfort zones. !So much of this conversation really depends on what you inherited for “sacred.” !My sense of the sacred was shaped by this …

This is what I grew up with in my Northern German upbringing. It was ordered and ancient and so precise. !And here is an image representing what my beloved partner of 26 years - Cheri - grew up with …

Deeply spiritual, living on the edge of chaos - often celebrates the chaos and uncertainties of life. Also celebrates a slightly anarchic sense of undoing the establishment.

Given all that Bishop Alexander

shared with us this morning, what are the possibilities?

Where might we start?

So much of our conversation today depends on your starting places - where you began your relationship with the church’s ritual. Listen to what you shared, yesterday! (Read the quotes from Thursday night’s opening round of introductions) !It depends on the tradition that shaped you: Temple or Tent?

Who is this for?

It also depends on who you think the ritual is for. In inside out worship, Tom Schattauer claims that our ritual is for both Temple and Tent, for the insider and the outsider! His claim is that Worship and Mission are a reversible cloak. There are a couple of traditional approaches: Worship used as evangelism for the outsider. Worship used by insiders as a missionary example for the outsider. Dr Schattauer offers a third way: an approach combines the two interchangeably. We will come back to this in a few minutes.

Means of Grace

Symbol of that Means

Parable of the Crude Little Life Saving Station starts out with crude little life-saving station and a motley crew that went out with a single boat to save those often s hipwrecked on that rocky seacoast. By the time that life-saving station becomes a club, the uses for that little boat changed dramatically. Hear this quote:

“Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in the club’s decorations, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club’s initiations were held.” !

Parable of the Crude Little Life Saving Station starts out with crude little life-saving station and a motley crew that went out with a single boat to save those often shipwrecked on that rocky seacoast. By the time that life-saving station becomes a club, the uses for that little boat changed dramatically. Hear this quote: “Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in the club’s decorations, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club’s initiations were held.” !Eucharistic Meal upstairs at Trinity looks very different than what happens later in the Undercroft with Church of the Advocate.

The Question that messes this all up - the Big Bird on a Wire!

The Question that messes this all up - the Big Bird on a Wire!

What kind of liturgy would you need, in order to feel comfortable with

inviting your grandson,

your co-worker - your 25 year old single neighbor?

This chart is an excerpt from “Engaging Emergence” by Peggy Holman

3 Essential shifts in perspective !

God is a God of longing !God has made Herself vulnerable to our Yes’s and No’s. !God is actively engaged long before we show up!

What makes this conversation different are three essential shifts in practice: !(Most of us would claim that we already believe this and that our BoP reflects this belief.) Problem is that we don’t ACT like we believe it.) !God is a God of longing: Romans 5. God is always more motivated than we are. !God has made herself vulnerable to our Yes’s and No’s: Ezekiel 37. A God in waiting … speak to me! !God is actively engaged long before we show up: Acts 10. !

An essential shift in r o l e s !

An essential shift in r o l e s !So many of us long privately because we are not sure that those already gathered will be offended. This is an invitation to stand inside the circle of our faith communities and transform those into C’s.

An essential shift in r o l e s !!

From mediating to facilitating encounters !

An essential shift in r o l e s !From mediating to facilitating encounters: Tom Driver’s “Liberating Rites” !The community is offering encounter with … community the mystery Scriptures (Show Brueggeman’s video, here)

An essential shift in r o l e s !!

From mediating to facilitating encounters !From guarding to bridging !

An essential shift in r o l e s !From mediating to facilitating encounters: Tom Driver’s “Liberating Rites” !From guarding to bridging: Wendy Farley’s “Gathering those driven away” !Bridging via making accessible that which was the domain of the elite. Revivifying those sacraments that we have turned into symbols. (All of life is symbolic but …) Bridging between cultures - doing the translation work.

An essential shift in r o l e s !!

From mediating to facilitating encounters !From guarding to bridging !From inclusive to expansive

An essential shift in r o l e s !From mediating to facilitating encounters: Tom Driver’s “Liberating Rites” !From guarding to bridging: Wendy Farley’s “Gathering those driven away” !From inclusive to expansive: Doug Gay’s “Remixing the church”

REFERENCES: !For the Birds is a 2000 animated short film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Ralph Eggleston. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2001. It premiered on June 5, 2000, at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France. !Walter Brueggeman makes the case to recover the congregational practice of praying the Psalms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le9cWgEkfvA

For further reading: !The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Foundations of Human Behavior) by Victor Turner !Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual by Tom F. Driver ! Remixing The Church: Towards an Emerging Ecclesiology by Doug Gay !The Feast of the World's Redemption: Eucharistic Origins and Christian Mission by John Koenig !The Art of Curating Worship: Reshaping the Role of Worship Leader by Mark Pierson !Why Is There a Menorah on the Altar?Jewish Roots of Christian Worship by Meredith Gould, Ph.D. ! Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice by Catherine Bell !Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer by Leonel L. Mitchell !!

For further reading: !Ministry and Imagination by Urban Tigner Holmes !Eucharist as Sacrament of Initiation: Forum Essay #2 by Nathan D. Mitchell ! A Wee Worship Book: Fourth Incarnation by Wild Goose Worship Group (Sep 4, 1999) !Worship and mission by J. G Davies !Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations by Dan Kimball !Gathering Those Driven Away: A Theology of Incarnation by Wendy Farley !The Art of Public Prayer by Lawrence A. Hoffman !Liturgies of the Future: by Anscar J. Chupungco

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Reverend Tom Brackett Missioner, New Church Starts & Missional Initiatives Episcopal Church Center 815 2nd Ave. New York, NY 10017 646-203-6266 tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org